Huawei has allegedly been spied on by the NSA since 2009

NSA has a not-so-novel way of battling The China Problem

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Remember all that hullaballoo from the media and politicians in the United States over fears Huawei would use infrastructure contracts to build backdoor spying networks on behalf of the Chinese government?

Well, as the U.S. government was throwing around the words "international espionage," its very own National Security Agency has already hacking into Huawei's servers and was taking a good nose around.

The information derives from the latest leak from exiled whistleblower Edward Snowden and claims the NSA had cracked the company's systems way back in 2009, seeing it as a national security threat.

Snowden claims the NSA spied on emails between top ranking Huawei officials and grabbed the source codes of products hoping to establish a link between Huawei and the People's Liberation Army.

An NSA document stated: "Many of our targets communicate over Huawei-produced products. We want to make sure that we know how to exploit these products [to] gain access to networks of interest."

Irony

William Plumber, Huawei's North American vice president was quick to cite the irony, but claimed the government's access to Huawei's information should put paid to accusations of spying on the U.S.

He told the New York Times: "The irony is that exactly what they are doing to us is what they have always charged that the Chinese are doing through us."

"If such espionage has been truly conducted then it is known that the company is independent and has no unusual ties to any government, and that knowledge should be relayed publicly to put an end to an era of mis- and disinformation."

Last year Huawei withdrew from the US market, claiming it was fed up of the accusations and being "stuck in the middle" of diplomatic relations between the two countries.